TECHNOLOGY + EMOTION

Remember the tussle between quicktime, winplayer and realplayer to be the default video player? then the fight to become the default search engine won by google, who is also now trying to become the default broswer.  well steps were taken today by Spotify to try and become the default music player on your computer, not MP3 player but music player.  By integrating it with mobile, it is trying to be the only Music player interface you will need

Spotify will now be going “social” - you can now see and subscribe to what your Facebook friends are listening to and also recommend music to them.  

but as well as streaming music from the cloud, it lets you play the existing MP3s on your hard drive through it and create playlists which then get synced to your phone.  Also a clever move to own all the music playing touch points. 

Here is a demo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gng29RIhIl8

It has e-commerce built ionto it, now if it could develop a recommendation engine as strong as Last.FM or Pandora, it could be the only music player you would need.  One to also watch out for is mflow (http://www.mflow.com/)

Will be interesting to see the tussle to be the default video player.  is Boxee (www.boxee.com) in the driving seat? the Spotify changes almost make this like Boxee for music. 

One factor which could upset the dynamic and bring in a whole new set of competitors will be internet enabled TVs and IPTV.  put your seat belts on everybody, its going to get very interesting. 

There are differing points of view at the moment about the impact and also implications of the Facebook announcements at F8.  this is where my head is at. 

From a social and cultural point of view,  THEY ARE THE BIG DEAL.  They will change the way you interact with social networks and how you surf the internet forever, how brands can target consumers and will challenge the dominance of Google as being the most powerful company online.  In fact in year from now any website which has not incorporated these changes, will look very archaic.

WHY IT WILL CHANGE THE WAY YOU INTERACT WITH THE WEB AND SOCIAL NETWORKS

Social networking will no longer happen just in social networks  it will happen on every site of the internet.  Imagine being on any website and being able to “like” that site by simply clicking a button, whether that is an article, a band, a song.  You will be able to leave comments on that site, see what your friends have done on that site, what they think of the content on that site and you will even be able to see which of your friends are currently on that site, and connect with them on that site.  

But then imagine going onto another site, and because your likes and activities have been remembered, the site becomes personalised to your tastes or to your friends tastes, or it even suggests stuff that people who liked similar things to you also like (this is the beginning of the “semantic web”), so if you have “liked” various artists/ bands across various sites – by the time you get to a music streaming site like Pandora, it will generate a playlist automatically of songs you might like.  

When you do go onto Facebook itself, it will suggest communities you should join of people who also like the same things as you and let you connect with them and share ideas and interests.  

Facebook have also introduced their own currency called “Facebook Credits” which allows one payment system across all app.  So you will not need to have separate accounts for payment across Farmville or 1-800 Flowers, but a seamless centralised payment system like ITunes, a seamlessness which will make commerce take off on Facebook in a big way. [I can see print publications developing Facebook editions which will be powered by these micropayments]

WHY IT WILL CHANGE THE WAY BRANDS TARGET CONSUMERS

Facebook have made it piss easy for brands to integrate these social features into a website: http://developers.facebook.com/plugins

We will probably see a shift in branded experiences taking place on proprietary microsites and no longer having to be in social networks.  

A brand will now know how popular parts of their site experience are, which bit of content are the most relevant.  Not only this they will know the demographics and maybe even the locations of audiences engaging with their site, as well as how they are engaging.   This will open up developing more attitude based advertising.  Wherever consumers go on the web, they will carry their preferences, behaviours and friends with them.

And this is WHY FACEBOOK WILL CHALLENGE THE DOMINANCE OF GOOGLE

Google has a massive advertising and search platform based on keywords.  Facebook is creating an advertising and search platform which is based on behaviors, attitudes, preferences and social connections [what your friends like and do etc], this allows the creation of more powerfully targetted relevant advertising and experiences.

These for me were the big out takes as people who work in marketing.  For more information you can watch the keynote in full here:  http://www.facebook.com/f8

Thoughts?

Those of you watching the France v Ireland qualifier last night might have seen blatant cheat / Cunning National hero Thierry Henry handle the ball for France to progress into the world cup. 

The social media impact of this incident was huge, the Tweet trends for the last 24 hours for both "Ireland" and "Thierry Henry" are shown below.

Notice the immediate “epicentre” of activity, an immediate window of activity around the event itself.

The youtube video was sent round of the incident (which is now no longer available due to copyright )

Numerous twitter Hashtags were created

Within this time, this Facebook group had been set up: (457 members at the time, but now over 6,000)
http://www.facebook.com/lehandball?ref=nf

The French wikipedia entry of Thierry Henry had been changed, describing him not as a footballer but as a volleyballer.  Again it has been amended back now, and if you go to the site now it has been locked “due to repeated acts of vandalism” ( http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thierry_Henry)

Along side this many humourous images were created and passed around

The “watercooler” discussion around this now continues on social media. 

My observations from this are:

how can we use the increasing consumer media behaviour of live shared experience on TV with simultaneous social discussions?
how can we respond at the speed of culture as a brand and be parts of these conversations, maybe have a point of view, not just in the tail of the watercooler conversations but actually in the epicentre of the activity when people are more likely to participate and the incident very relevant and fresh in their mind. Obviously brands need to tread sensitively in this.

Interestingly if Twitter is to be believed Ireland is now boycotting Gillette and Renault Clio ;-)

(download)

Click here to download:

Social_Media_and_The_Hand_of_G.zip (116 KB)